I found this post to be quite interesting, some of you may have google searched it and read it, but for those that havent, here it is http://www.merchantaccountforum.com/clickbankreview.html
Hmm... Interesting. If that's the case, I hope it will be fixed soon. I really want to use ClickBank because it has a wide affiliate network, but if it continues they may lose a customer... nadavs
it also explains the reason sales are so random nowadays. The customers is ready to buy, enters there cc number and it doesnt go through. Just think how many times this has happened. Then I am hearing things about creating new accounts etc... I dont know if this helps or not, but some have reported sales returned. I am going to try it when today ends if my day ends up like it was yeasterday.
That article is several years old. I have seen it posted on forums many times over the past five or six years.
I don't want to change my affiliate network. There is also CJ, but Clickbank is much better and simpler in design and use.
Yep, I've also had a few people email me or call with proof that they could not purchase and they KNOW that their credit cards are clean. I think it's horrible - there are many pieces to the puzzle at CB - however the MAIN and MOST IMPORTANT is obviously the transaction process and collecting MONEY. If that part is not working or has hiccups, of course no affiliates will make normal sales, and of course publishers like myself will see less sales as well. It's too bad, and this really makes me look towards 2checkout and paydotcom and others as this has got to stop. CB is losing tons of money too don't forget, but they can't just stop operations to figure this out, so they do 'updates' which are merely middle of the night scrambles to fix or change an algorythm, optimize code, etc. however rarely do these updates got performed flawlessly and there is usually a round 2 3 or 4 to re-fix what they now broke by fixing something else. I use to look after a complex team of coders and they would often fix one thing but break 3 others... Anyway this is truly a shame, and I'm feeling the reprocussions now too, last two days were abnormaly low for my whole product line, then 2 emails and a phone call later that CC's are not being accepted, I called CB - their answer - 'their cards MUST have been bad...'. FUBAR. NC.
Well now at least we know that clickbank IS probably responsible for (at least a portion of) the recent decline in sales. I'm planning to re-evaluate all campaigns in the near future to see whether they are turning any profits in spite of this loss in sales. If clickbank's payment processor is indeed the cause of the problem, I'd guess that they'd want to switch over to something more reliable in the near future - it would make good business sense for them to do so - if they don't want to lose their publishers and affiliates. Amy
Design and use are cool indeed But the key issue here is the credit card verification process And this is the key to our online/ecommerce businesses
Thanks for nice talk form a publisher. NCmedia, Good job. please keep contacting CB about the abnormal sales for last week. I have stopped using adw to prompt CB . just free traffic is working. Many of my friend prompting CB have this problem, We discussed to change to CJ , paydotcom or else . CB really hurt us so much.
Reminds me of the "updates" and "patches" that Microsoft releases for its operating systems. It causes more damage than good.
i dont understand how a company that makes a million dollars a day can have problems like this. They can afford the best of everything yet still the same old problem for years
Look at Microsoft. They generate many billions of dollars per year, but still release buggy products like Vista. Software is excruciatingly complex, and sometimes fixing a problem by throwing money at it is easier said than done. I think with Clickbank, the problem is they have a lot of legacy software that their entire business runs on, and to substantially change or replace the core of their operational software, they'd need to shut down their entire system for some time which would be a nightmare, and could potentially snowball into a massive implosion of their own system. Even if they phased the release of the changes, affiliates and publishers would complain of unfair treatment because not all products/affiliates would be treated equally at a given moment as changes are rolled out across all products/hops/publishers/affiliates. So they end up taking the iterative approach of patching leaks as they occur while leaving the core software the same. Additionally, they have a patent on their cookie-driven affiliate system, and there's no other system out there as scalable and easy to integrate by affiliates. Therefore, Clickbank doesn't feel enough pressure from competitive threats to risk the potential adverse consequences of more drastic changes/improvements. After all, they make a ton and affiliates aren't going anywhere for now. If some affiliates leave, it just becomes more rewarding for the ones that stay, creating some level of equilibrium. They are also privately held, so they don't have share holders to answer to. They pay their employees satisfactorily, and the folks at the top who run the show live very financially secure lives. I have no doubt if a new affiliate powered competitor emerged that posed a real threat to CB, Clickbank would waste no time making improvements that simply don't have the cost/benefit ratio that CB is willing to accept at this point given the risks.
I still thing clickbank is great despite these frequent problems.Luckily I have never experienced any major sales problems.
I wouldn't be quick to jump to 2checkout as I had problems trying to pay for my webhosting through 2checkout processor... it was due to the way credit card companies are verifying cards. There is a new secure payment system in place - 2checkout rejected my payment even though the card was legit (it has worked fine for my domain names, just couldn't pay for my webhosting at one company). Anyway, the result was I transferred money to paypal and then paid it through paypal - but it did cause my account to be suspended even though I had paid with an e-cheque, the company hadn't acknowledged it correctly and left my account marked as unpaid and suspended my account even though I had paid on time. After a few complaints, they realised their mistake and have now corrected their processing to account for any similar slip-ups in future. However, I now transfer the money directly into paypal so that it is cleared a few days before payment is needed for my webhosting. I suspect that ClickBank will need to look at how they are handling the new credit card verification system and ensure they are handling it correctly. My advice: Clickbank 'merchants' should pursue queries relating to how clickbank are handling the new 'Secure Pay' type approaches by leading credit card companies. 2checkout had to alter their system to accomodate the change and so has every other merchant who accepts credit card payments directly... so I doubt clickbank would not have to adapt their process as well. (edit) - I have not used 2checkout since and do not know if they are still having the same problem - as I had made a few payments using them before and only suffered a problem when they changed their system.